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Category Archives: Rants

I watched British Secret Shoppers the other day and one of the top tips for buying gadgets is to look for refurbished products. It can be quite true in some cases but when I look at Apple’s refurbished products, they are not always look as if they are a bargain. I might rather go for second hand product at shops like Cex which also gives one year’s warranty. Anyway, I may have to look for refurbished or second hand gadgets in the future just to save us some money.

Speaking of Apple’s product, I browsed Apple’s website this morning and there was a prompt asking me to download its app. I clicked on the link and it brought me to App Store. It has two and a half stars and that got me curious. I went ahead and read the reviews and I thought it is rather ridiculous and harsh for the reviewers to write those comments. Well, most of them were not even talking about the app itself, they were complaining Apple for not providing an iPad version of the app. It’s the same thing about what I said regarding Real Racing 3 few days ago.

Why can’t people just review the app and stop talking nonsense? What does not having an iPad version say about an app? It’s a great app but there is no iPad version therefore I give it one star. How ridiculous! I almost wanted to just write a review to tell them off but then, I would be writing a review not about the app myself.

Who doesn’t like free stuffs? I think everyone loves free stuffs but some people just can’t get enough. Some people still want to make a fuss even though they get things for free. Well, I am talking about the new EA game, Real Racing 3. I was really surprised when I learnt that it’s free considering that Real Racing and Real Racing 2 are paid app. I was a bit cheeky as I downloaded a cracked version of Real Racing 2 when my iPad2 was still a jailbroken device. Even by Real Racing 2 standard, it is comparable to the Grand Turismo that I played on my old phat PSP. The new Real Racing 3 is even better and I truly believe that it has taken over Need for Speed as the best car racing game for mobile platform.

It’s free and review after review I read, the authors were complaining about the need to make in-app purchases. The game is separated into many different levels and each level has its own set of cars and multiple events. Once you have enough money to buy a car from a different level, you will be able to play that level and so on. As with most games that rely on in-app purchases to make money, there are two currencies in Real Racing 3. One you can get by winning events and you use it to purchase new cars and the other one is gold where you use it for extras such as paint job and fix a car without waiting time. Well, Real Racing 3 is trying to replicate some real life driving where you have to service your car after a few events and also repair any damages during an event. It’s the servicing where you have to wait. At the beginning of the game where you only have one car, you can either wait or use the gold to eliminate the waiting time. As you progress, you purchase more cars and while waiting for one to be serviced, you can just enter another even using another car.

Hence, I can’t really see why reviewers made a major fuss about the in-app purchases. I agree that a review should cover every aspect of Real Racing 3 but I believe that everyone will agree that it’s a beautiful game and I have played hours of it without making any in-app purchases. To be honest, I finished all Real Racing 2 events and breaking every records in just a few days and it just left me wanting for more. I can see myself playing Real Racing 3 forever! Well, until the next one is out. And I can’t believe a review scored Real Racing 3 just 5 out of 10. It’s ridiculous.

Our landlord is currently doing some stuffs around the house that we live. He has been fiddling with the satellite especially after the new guy bought a TV set and a satellite dish from his home country, Poland. The ambitious thing is that he is trying to receive Polish channels. I think our landlord is really kind to want to set it up for him. After a few checks and our landlord even had a professional guy come around to inspect the possibility of receiving Polish channel, they reckoned that it is not possible. Still, our housemate didn’t believe them and he did it his own way. I am not entirely sure what exactly happened but now, our housemate’s satellite dish is at the front of the house instead of at the back of the house where it was installed previously. Anyway, we can’t be bothered as long as our housemate’s doing doesn’t affect our internet connection.

Sometimes, you just can’t understand what are people’s concept about house sharing. That same housemate has a car and the front of our rented house can accommodate two cars; one by the roadside and one in the driveway. His parking skill is atrocious. I wonder where he got his licence. When he parks his car by the roadside, he never really cares whether or not the car in the driveway would have enough space to get in or out. There was this time where we just snapped because he left a space of about exactly the width of our car. Mee just went upstairs and let him know about what a good job he did. Only then, he starts to park sensibly.

Anyway, our landlord has also promised to sort out the damp in the shower room as well as the kitchen cupboards. He has brought around some tools, paints and u-shaped handles but he hasn’t started any work yet. Well, we both know that we live in this space for too long, more than 5 years now. It’s time to move.

Recently, I received a letter from Virgin Media offering a free trial upgrade of my TV package from size M to M+. The TV package size M was no longer in any of Virgin Media’s bundles ages ago and I believe that this trial offer is to attract me into upgrading my current size M package. To be honest, Mee and I don’t really feel the need of upgrading to M+ as we haven’t really tuned in to any of the extra TV channels at all. The trial upgrade ends in April and it will just switch back to size M. Eventually, I believe that we will be forced to upgrade anyway and we will be told that Virgin Media no longer offers TV size M.

One thing that stopped us from shopping around for other TV and broadband packages’ service provider is that I quite like Virgin Media’s customer service. As bad as it may be, I think it’s still better than the others. About a year ago, I had a big row with it’s customer service, which I believe stationed in India, and it’s about intermittent broadband service especially during weekend. Weeks after weeks and they offered little support and the technicians just came and fixed it, and it went bad after they left. In the end, someone sensible said that the cable had to be replaced. I was directed to the support team in UK and they gave me a month’s free plus another month for the time when I didn’t get their broadband service.

It’s sorted and a few days later, I received a call from a Virgin Media guy asking if everything was alright. It was a mobile number and the guy told me to save the number and that he is in charge of the Virgin Media customers in my area. If there’s anything wrong in the future, he will be the one to contact. It’s been a year and we didn’t have the need to call him at all, but I wouldn’t know if he is still working for Virgin Media anyway. Oh, I called the customer service a few months ago and upon checking, the customer service guy just said that the modem that we were using was too old and he will be sending a new one. A couple of days later, we received the new modem and problem solved. Somehow, I was really satisfied with that the most recent experience. I was quite keen to try other service provider such as Sky but I don’t really like the use of satellite dish. Well, sooner or later, Mee and I will move out of this place and not every area in Basingstoke can have Virgin Media. We’ll see.

I have been quite busy recently that I didn’t even have the time to update this blog. Well, maybe not as busy as Mee though. I still have the time to relax at the end of the day after a day’s work. Mee now works in the morning and at night almost every day temporarily except Sunday. She works part time at night but the owner of the shop prefers a full time staff. Hence, it might be the case where she will have to leave when the owner found a full time staff. Anyway, it’s still better than nothing.

There have been a lot of changes in my workplace and no one seems to know exactly what happened except the senior management team. Communication is still as bad as ever, if not worse than before. I just wish that they could be more transparent and just let everyone in the organisation knowing what is happening in all the departments; staffs leaving, changing job description and stuffs like that. I guess it’s easier said than done. At times, Mee and I questioned ourselves whether or not it’s worth still living in this country. More European immigrants will be coming from next year and jobs will be even scarce. Watching and reading the news, it seems like they do not plan on coming to this country to work, but to claim the benefits instead.

I believe that many people don’t realise that Mee and I are the different type of immigrant compared to European immigrants. We can’t claim anything and we need to have a visa in order to come into this country to work. We have spent thousands of pounds recently to apply for our indefinite leave to remain visa and some of my colleagues even asked if the money was well spent just to live in this country. The pounds have dropped and everything else is on the rise. Well, on the other hand, if we were to go back to Malaysia, we may have to start everything from scratch. We are sort of in the middle of everything now. In my mind, I just thought that we should just continue living here since I still have my job. My job is the thing that keep me focused and stay in the path and I must admit that I really enjoy my job.

Well, this post isn’t exactly about portable hard drives vs desktop hard drives. Just yesterday, I bought a Samsung M3 1TB Portable Hard Drive online. It should take about a week to arrive as I have chosen the free delivery option. While waiting for it to be delivered, I started reading reviews from Amazon users. I have read some of the reviews before I made the purchase and now, I am just reading them for fun since there are just under 300 reviews. As usual with a computer product, there are bound to be good and bad reviews. For Samsung M3 1TB Portable Hard Drive, there aren’t many bad reviews. I think I have read all the bad reviews and they were just saying that it failed within a few weeks or a couple of months. I am not worried though because most of the portable hard drives have the same reviews of them being failed within a certain period of time.

In my opinion, there are now only a few hard drive manufacturers remain and most of the products out there would just be using the same hard drive internally. They would then slap their own logo and create their own casing to make it look unique to other products.

Anyhow, I came across a person commenting on an Amazon review. The original review praised the Samsung M3 1TB portable hard drive for being lightweight and quiet as well as reliable. A comment came in and started saying that Western Digital hard drives are better and the price is about the same. He bought a Samsung M3 1TB and it failed him almost immediately. His computer didn’t even recognise the portable hard drive. Another person then joined the conversation by asking him which Western Digital hard drive he was talking about. The answer he gave was Western Digital Elements 1TB Desktop Hard Drive. He added that the Western Digital Hard Drive was only slightly bigger and about as portable as the Samsung M3.

If the Western Digital Elements 1TB Desktop Hard Drive were a portable hard drive, it would have been called Western Digital Elements 1TB Portable Hard Drive. It is called Desktop Hard Drive because it is supposed to stay on your desktop. It requires a power adapter for power obviously, and a USB cable for connectivity. It is still portable but in my opinion, it is not ideal. That’s when a portable hard drive comes in. Samsung M3 1TB Portable Hard Drive only weighs 150g while the Western Digital Elements weighs 1kg. Look who’s more portable?

Samsung M3 only requires a USB cable for both power and connectivity. By the way, it supports USB2 and USB3 while Western Digital Elements only supports USB2. The size of the hard drive in Samsung M3 is 2.5″ while it’s 3.5″ in Western Digital Elements. I can’t understand how both of them could be classified as pretty similar and as portable. That guy really has given those products a whole new definition.

In fact, I was so fired up that I logged into Amazon just to write a comment to question that guy. I just dislike the way people giving out wrong information yet sounded as if they knew everything.

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